One To Watch: Space Punch

And we haven't even gotten to the 'space' part yet.

I love seeing all the new publishers getting in on the manga game. The more the merrier. I stumbled on some Scholastic manga the other day, and by stumbled on, I mean it appeared on my desk at work. And before that, I finally found the time to pick up two of the inaugural titles from Kana, a French publisher that’s imprinting through Abrams.

Those two titles: Silence and Space Punch. Both have their own merits, but I forced myself to choose only one and despite my initial impulse to make that one Silence, I found myself gravitating more towards Space Punch.

Haymaker incoming.

Space Punch introduces a few things right off the bat that made this an immediate hit. First, the main character is a young delivery boy, just lost his job, and he reluctantly decides to get into boxing. I’m already sold. His brother, a cop, isn’t as compelling as a lead character, but as a fixture in the story, I can absolutely see where his value will be, especially as a supporting cast for his younger brother.

These two brothers have a tough life, their father has passed away, and despite cop brothers best efforts, corruption in his precinct runs deep. The police are owned by gangsters, and only he seems to care enough to want to stop it.

It’s been awhile since I found a good sibling dynamic in manga. Space Punch absolutely nails it. In Volume 1, we get into the depth of their relationship, its flaws and its difficulties. This isn’t a perfect brotherly love, that’s for sure, but there isn’t such animosity that the primary push is healing. It’s a compelling middle ground that opens up so many possible realms of exploration.

But where things really get interesting is when they spend some time together, in the old family cabin, reminiscing about their father. Without wanting to get into too many spoilers, let’s just say that father left behind two pieces of his boxing life—training gloves, and a hat. Cop brother puts on the hat, fired delivery boy brother puts on the gloves. And maybe dad isn’t so far gone after all.

It’s a rare first volume that literally leaves me desperate to find out what happens next. I feel like I’ve read enough that this sensation is pretty rare. Space Punch got me. The ending is such a cliffhanger with a promise for so much more, perhaps incorporating the “Space” from the title, who knows. But having the perfect balance of grounded sibling relationship and supernatural uncertainty, this is absolutely one I’ll be coming back to.